Joe Paterno was a student of the classics. You can be sure that he read "Julius Caesar" and you can be sure he was familiar with Mark Antony's words.

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The good that Paterno did -- winning a lot of football games while graduating his players, endowing a chair in the English department dedicated to teaching the classics, building a university with an impeccable academic tradition -- wasn't interred with his bones. Evidence of it is everywhere.

But the evil that he did -- and, examining the evidence compiled in former FBI director Louis Freeh's report about the child-sex-abuse scandal at the university, it was evil -- will live on, a legacy of 14 years of children being preyed upon by a serial pedophile, a man who had been in Paterno's employ for some three decades.

That evil will live on in the horrific memories and tortured psyches of Jerry Sandusky's victims.

That evil will live on as an entire generation will come to associate Penn State not with football excellence, but with a scandal that resulted in the most vulnerable among us being horrifically abused as men in positions of power covered it up.

That evil will live on.

And that evil may bury whatever good he accomplished with his bones.

That is not to say that Paterno was an evil man. But he did commit an evil act. Along with other top university officials ... well, here is what Freeh had to say about it:

"Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State. The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the

children who Sandusky victimized. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky's victims until after Sandusky's arrest."

Two words jump out at you: "Total disregard."

Later in his statement, Freeh referred to the "callous and shocking disregard" of the victims in this case.

"Callous and shocking."

Not usually words associated with Penn State.

More from Freeh: "It is ... reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University -- Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley -- repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities, the Board of Trustees, Penn State community, and the public at large. Although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed by them for Sandusky's victims."

They expressed -- apologies to Messrs. Jagger and Richards -- sympathy for the devil, while disregarding the pain he inflicted on children.

It is an evil that did not just infect an otherwise good man -- Paterno -- it infected the institution, as much a part of the university as the Creamery or Old Main or Beaver Stadium. This evil is more than a stain or scarlet letter; it is an evil that has revealed the darker angels of the university's nature.

The Freeh report concluded: "There is an over-emphasis on 'The Penn State Way' as an approach to decision making, a resistance to seeking outside perspectives, and an excessive focus on athletics that can, if not recognized, negatively impact the University's reputation as a progressive institution."

Freeh's investigators found what many of us already knew -- that Penn State is an insular place, an island, a bubble-enclosed kingdom cloaked in secrecy.

The university has always been secretive. Remember, it took a lawsuit to find out how much the publicly funded institution was paying Paterno. The university controlled information, whether it was Paterno's fetish for secrecy about the conduct of his players or a simple request for some budget figures. It controlled its universe.

But this is different. This culture of silence was top to bottom, according to the report, referencing the testimony of janitors who had information about Sandusky assaulting a child and declining to report out of fear for their jobs.

The Freeh report damns all involved -- from the top administrators to Paterno to the board of trustees for not performing its role as overseer to those involved in a 1998 investigation of Sandusky's terrible acts -- but to be sure, it places a large amount of the blame on the shoulders of the now-deceased legend of Happy Valley.

In an e-mail sent to his players, Paterno wrote, "I feel compelled to say, in no uncertain terms, that this is not a football scandal."

In a way, he was right. It is a university scandal. But it grew from the culture surrounding the football program and a culture that Paterno nurtured.

The coach always preached loyalty. He lived it, staying at Penn State despite offers of riches to go elsewhere. He demanded it from his players. He inspired students to it; the loyalty of Penn State alum to their school is powerful. (I know; I'm one them.)

And it led to his downfall. He placed his loyalty to his former defensive coordinator above any empathy he may have felt for the victims of Sandusky's twisted crimes.

The Freeh report concluded that in 1998, when allegations about Sandusky were investigated, Paterno knew about them and allowed Sandusky "to retire in 1999, not as a suspected child predator, but as a valued member of the Penn State football legacy, with future 'visibility' at Penn State and "ways to continue to work with young people through Penn State," essentially granting him a license to bring boys to campus facilities for 'grooming' as targets for his assaults."

The university was dealing with another scandal in 1998. According to the Freeh report, the university discovered that a sports agent had bought one of Penn State's football players $400 worth of clothes. The administration took swift action, banning the agent from campus for life.

So a pedophile was allowed to retire "as a valued member of the Penn State football legacy" and "continue to work with young people," but an agent who bought $400 worth of clothes for the player was not tolerated.

That kind of evil lives on, long after good goes to the grave.

Mike Argento's is a columnist for our sister paper The York Daily Record/Sunday Times. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.ydr.com/mike. Or follow him on Twitter at FnMike